It was not a very happy Malaysia that, on Friday, celebrated 50 years since Malaya became independent. (Malaysia came into existence in 1963 when the British-ruled Sabah, Sarawak and [briefly] Singapore joined.)
For sure, Malaysia has a lot to celebrate in terms of progress, prosperity, openness, diversity and flexibility. But it seems that the celebrations have been able to provide only a brief interlude between increasingly raucous exchanges over race and religion.
Indeed, the 50th anniversary has focused attention on these two most divisive issues: how to create a Malaysian identity out of a mixed population while maintaining Malay supremacy; and how to accommodate the religious expectations of an Islamic majority within a secular constitution. In turn, these are fuelled as much by economic forces as by those of ideology and culture.
The bottom line is that the race-based political party system is no longer so useful. It served tolerably well in the early independence era, creating a coalition that provided a means of keeping racial and religious strains in check. But the dominance of the United Malays National Organisation has become so marked that a tyranny of the (almost) majority is never far from non-Malay minds.
After 50 years of power, Umno has become one of the most corrupt political parties on the planet. Power in most societies provides access to contracts and payoffs, but in Malaysia the process is giving legal sanction through preferences for Malays.
In turn, the Umno leadership has to pander to Islamist pressures. That's in order to prevent the Parti Islam se-Malaysia from gaining the votes of the religiously inclined, or those Malays resentful of the fact that the elite is the main beneficiary of pro-Malay economic policies. This explains the gradual drift away from the notion that the constitution is secular in spirit and, while it gives a certain primacy to Islam and Malays on account of history and numbers, it is in essence racially neutral.
Of course, Islam should be racially neutral, too. But in the Malay version, religion and race have become intertwined so that Malays are by definition Muslim. Muslim laws must be accorded a status above that of the secular constitution. Meanwhile, Malays must be accorded economic and social privileges to bring them up to the level of the non-Malays.